Kiss your pants goodbye, Evil One!

Gather ye 'round, children, and I'll share with you the tale of the absolute worst comic book ever to be produced by those hacks down at Image Comics. This was pretty early in Image's run, when everyone was mad for 'em, when they could do no wrong, when they knew they could print page after page of pure crap and comics readers would plaster their California-tanned butts with cash no matter how bad it was. Well, almost. "Bloodmaster Scarlet" proved that even comics fanboys have some taste.

"Bloodmaster Scarlet" was created by Claude Bravo, a comics fan who had a talent for kissing up to comics professionals. He was not much of an artist, but luckily, the only things he could draw well -- big muscles and big breasts -- were exactly what kids in the early- to mid-1990s wanted to see. His writing skill, however, was almost entirely nonexistent. Of course, at the time, the bigwigs at Image didn't believe you needed good writing to make comics -- as long as the art looked good, that was all that mattered. Bravo got along great with Image co-founder Rob Liefeld, who agreed to let him create and publish a comic book with the company. The result was "Bloodmaster Scarlet".

In Issue #1, terrorists kidnapped the President. Bloodmaster Scarlet was called out, and he killed the terrorists with his Extremely Large Gun and Extremely Large Knife. Chastity came along for the ride; she killed a few terrorists, then got captured by the terrorist leader. Despite the fact that she could carry twin 50-pound plasma rifles around with ease, she couldn't manage to overpower one badly-drawn Arabic stereotype, and Bloodmaster Scarlet had to save her. The readers were then treated to two full pages of Bloodmaster Scarlet shooting the terrorist leader with Extremely Large Guns, leaving no more than a stain on the Oval Office carpet by the time he was finished. However, at no time in the comic did we ever see the guy who was supposed to be the President. Whether he actually got rescued is a mystery that was never explained.

In Issue #2, terrorists take all the students at an elementary school hostage. Bloodmaster Scarlet and Chastity Mangle are again called out. They annihilate the terrorists, except for the leader, who is apparently the exact same guy who got slaughtered in the first issue. As far as I can tell, Bravo didn't want to have to draw a new character and figured no one would notice. The terrorist leader captures Chastity, of course, and Bloodmaster Scarlet has to rescue her and the kids. He walks into the room where they're all being held and growls at the kids to get out of the building as he pulls the pin on a hand grenade and stuffs it down the terrorist leader's throat. The resulting explosion completely levels the school. Bloodmaster Scarlet and Chastity are, of course, entirely unharmed, but I doubt the children had time to even get out of the room before the super-grenade blew everything to hell.